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Support Grows for Sen. Paul's Audit the Fed bill

Sen. Rand Paul’s campaign to get a vote to audit the Federal Reserve as a condition for considering the nomination of Janet Yellen for Federal Reserve chair is gaining support from one Congressman. Rep. Kerry Bentivolio (R-MI) has written a letter in support of Paul’s Federal Reserve Transparency Act, S. 209.

The Federal Reserve currently operates without any oversight by Congress, leaving it totally unaccountable to the American people. Senator Paul’s bill provides the first necessary step to reining in the Federal Reserve and bringing control of the economy back under the jurisdiction of the American people instead of the bureaucrats in Washington.

This bill has already passed the House in a 327 to 98 vote during the last Congress, but Harry Reid has refused to bring it to the floor of the Senate for a vote (despite the fact that he has repeatedly declared his support for auditing the Fed). FreedomWorks urges all Members of the House to sign Rep. Bentivolio’s letter, letting the Senate know that the American people will not stand for another political appointee to chair the Federal Reserve while Congress is not allowed to see what the Fed is doing with America’s money.

You can find more information on Sen. Paul’s efforts, along with which Senators have co-sponsored his bill here.

As one of our over 6.6 million FreedomWorks activists nationwide, I urge you to contact your representative and ask him or her to vote YES on the Federal Reserve Transparency Act. Introduced by Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA), the bill would eliminate the current audit restrictions placed on the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and require a full and thorough audit of the Federal Reserve.

On February 12, 2014 FreedomWorks and Rand Paul, under the legal counsel of Ken Cuccinelli, filed suit against Barack Obama & The NSA, claiming injury due to the warrantless collection of metadata of the cellphone records of Rand Paul and FreedomWorks members and employees. The case, 14-CV-262, was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

This Independence Day, millions of Americans will gather to watch fireworks, grill some burgers and dogs, and celebrate the hard-fought freedoms of our forefathers. But in the heady rush of red, white, and blue patriotism, it’s important to remember what those freedoms actually mean, and to examine whether they still remain intact today.

A no-brainer issue that should unite practically everyone is auditing the Federal Reserve. Some may find it hard to believe that the central bank of the United States has never been fully audited. The public and even Congress is left in the dark about what goes on behind closed doors at the Fed. This severe lack of transparency is troubling since the central bank has so much power over the economy and our lives.

In his classic economic text, The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith had the following to say about collusion: “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”